


the sharp light of dawn

by Metronomeblue



Series: imagine me & you- forever [19]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, How I Think Things Went, originally posted as a bullet point list of headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24933445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: My own personal string of headcanons re: how Byakuya and Hisana met, fell in love, and fell apart. Sort of a fic, sort of a summary. I don't like posting headcanons to ao3, but this is still one of my favorite things I've ever written for this blog, so I'll make an exception
Relationships: Kuchiki Byakuya & Kuchiki Rukia, Kuchiki Byakuya/Kuchiki Hisana
Series: imagine me & you- forever [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/909927
Kudos: 16





	the sharp light of dawn

Okay, so first of all i feel like I should admit straight out that one of my favorite headcanons is that Hisana had some kind of spiritual pressure

She was struggling enough to abandon rukia, and i doubt she’d have done it unless she thought she was going to die otherwise

So she was weak, and small, and female, with just enough spiritual pressure to starve, and alone with a baby. She leaves Rukia in an alley and runs

They never specify how people get from one district to another, but it seems like it would be difficult, given that they make a pretty big deal about Rukia and Renji being from the Rukongai, not to mention how hopeless and resigned people seem to be in the outer districts. 

So I feel like Hisana hitchhiked there, in a way. Maybe she started out by walking, wearing down the side of the road until her feet couldn’t feel it anymore.

Maybe she was picked up by some merchants, or a small farmer’s cart. Maybe she stowed away in a transport of provisions for the seireitei. But she made it there eventually, seventy-eight districts away. 

But she was alone when she did it.

I like to think that, with whatever spiritual pressure she had, she tried to join the Gotei. We see some pretty average shinigami, after all, some pretty weak ones, too. It’s not too hard to see a woman alone wanting some way to defend herself, to build a life for herself. The Gotei seems like a good way to do that.

But Hisana also seemed like a pretty sweet, compassionate person. I think the academy might’ve been difficult for her- as it was for say, Momo- because of that. Because she was small, and quiet and gentle. And, many would say, weak.

But I don’t think she was. We’ve seen the range of Rukia and Renji’s skills- it’s very, very possible to improve your abilities in Bleach, and to do so relatively quickly. I think Hisana probably had a lot of potential.

I also think she threw it away.

I think the guilt got to her. Byakuya said she went back to the rukongai almost every day to look for Rukia. That kind of guilt doesn’t fade quickly, and I think it haunted her. I think she liked being a shinigami, that she outright enjoyed it. And I think she decided to leave.

Urahara says there’s no real way to leave in TBTP, that people take a permanent “leave of absence” and never come back. So it’s not too far-fetched to see someone who’s decided that the Gotei isn’t for them- for one reason or another- leaving that way. 

But I also think Hisana was the kind of person who did a lot of self-examination, a lot of thinking and meditating. She and Byakuya are birds of a feather in that way- they both bottle things up. She seems to have spent a lot of time sort of quietly examining her choices.

So for now, I’m going to assume she had Shikai. 

(I’m going to tell you right now that I think her shikai’s name would be “Settchuka,” a seasonal word used in poetry which means “flower set in the snow.”)

Because, again, so many shinigami of all strengths and backgrounds can unlock shikai. It can be a really weak shikai. She might have never even really used it. I still feel like she could do it pretty easily.

And when she cuts all ties to the Gotei, she leaves her sword behind, too. She goes to the edge of the seireitei and drops it into a lake. She tells her zanpakuto to leave and never come back.

So she leaves, decides to start a new life. This time, she decides to try something smaller. Just a quiet living.

She becomes a maid in the Kuchiki household.

She denies herself the happiness of serving in the Gotei, she denies herself even the contact with that world her sword would offer her. She withdraws from the other servants, keeps herself from forming any strong bonds. She just keeps living.

Her sword returns, over and over again, and she keeps turning it away. She drops it in lakes, rivers, mineshafts, wells, anything she can find that’s deep and cold. 

She tells herself that she chose her life over Rukia’s. She chose to live. So she lives. But she’s not going to let herself enjoy the life she stole.

Byakuya, freshly Grown Up™ and newly graduated, has returned to living at home rather than the academy.

I mean, seriously. Young, pretty, unfettered Byakuya, whose only tragic past events are his parents’ deaths and Yoruichi (one of his few ‘friends’) leaving. He’s the most adorable thing in the world. Trying to be as stoic and dignified as his grandfather, and probably still failing.

And all the maids are swooning. They’re tittering, fluttering, heart-eyed messes.

Except for Hisana, who sighs and does more laundry. 

Which Byakuya notices. So he’s intrigued. Dignity and focus are things he finds attractive.

And also let’s be honest, Hisana was pretty gorgeous. Put that in a cute Edo-period maid’s dress and snap. Twenty-year-old Byakuya (or the equivalent) is smitten.

So he kinda follows her around. Using his newly-minted Shinigami Skills™ to see what she’s like. 

Imagine his surprise when she turns around and gives him the most unimpressed look. She went to the Academy too. She knows the tricks.

“You’re following me,” she says, disapprovingly. “Please stop.”

“I’m the next head of the Kuchiki Clan,” Flustered Byakuya says without thinking. “You shouldn’t speak to me like that.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” she says, and there’s so much laughter in her voice he is so CHARMED, the man has fallen. “You’re following me, please stop, my lord,” she curtsies with so much sass and Byakuya’s got heart eyes. 

He stops following her, but every time he passes her in the halls he says hello, and she gives him that same fucking sass curtsy and a “My lord.” It becomes their Thing, and all the other maids are beginning to notice.

They make a pact to safeguard Hisana’s chastity (lol) because they believe Byakuya’s going to seduce her and then leave her out on the streets. It’s not like that was uncommon. And it’s outright illegal for them to get married.

Hisana’s like “Guys please. Please. Stop.” But they just get more rabid about it. Byakuya notices that his clothes are Passive-Aggressively Well-Folded, and he is confused.

I feel like Byakuya also had some kind of marriage contract in place. I mean, he is the Heir to one of the most prestigious clans in seireitei?? How could he not have some kind of marriage treaty on the table?? But they’ve barely spoken. There’s probably like twelve people in the room with them for Propriety’s Sake and all.

So time passes, and Byakuya notices Hisana goes on walks at night (probably to throw away her fucking stubborn zanpakuto bc that bitch just keeps coming back), and he starts going out too.

“Chance meetings” my ass

He does it on purpose, and everyone knows it

The first few times she’s kind of irritated that he’s easing in on her alone time, and she asks him to stop. He agrees, but goes out anyway. He doesn’t talk to her or follow her, but she knows he’s still sort of hoping to run into her. After a few nights she takes pity on him because he’s just so alone. And she’s alone. And fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen?

He’s really, really nice. That’s the worst that could happen. He’s a foot-scuffing, blushing, awkward, formal, repressed little ass is the worst that could happen, because it’s cute, and they’re good for each other, and she wants to be his friend, and it’s all so nice.

And Hisana hasn’t let herself have anything nice for such a long, long time.

He shoots her furtive looks in the night, when the stars glimmer over her ink-dark hair and violet eyes, when the moon wraps her in silver and blue and she looks like a thing from myth. He’s halfway in love with her already, but when she starts telling him things about herself, about the sister she let go of and has missed every breath since, about the parents she can barely remember, the world she left to come here. That’s when he really falls. Because the softness of her voice, the faint, honest smile she gives him make his heart sing. He just wants to hold her, to wipe away the quiet, mournful acceptance in her voice, the sadness in her eyes. He wants to warm her and thaw the ice in her heart, brittle and sharp, when she speaks of herself.

He wants to love her enough that she can love herself. He wants to find all the things she’s lost, all the things that were taken from her, so that there are no more holes in her heart.

And then they’re taking walks in the mornings, too, in the pale light of dawn. It’s sharp, and golden-blue, and it reflects off of the planes of his face so he looks lit from within. And Hisana wants to laugh at the offense on his face when he steps in a puddle, wants to kiss away the frown that mars his forehead when he speaks of his grandfather, wants to reassure him when he whispers of the legacy he fears he cannot carry. She wants to ease the rawness, the yearning in his voice when he speaks of the certainty he wishes he had, the trust he must place in the laws it is now his duty to carry out. She looks up at him in the gold of the morning and her heart breaks. The sky drapes itself over him like he’s a thing of the clouds, and he looks so lovely when he smiles like that that she can’t help falling in love with him.

She wants to love him, wants to be able to support him and make him smile- just like that- and to give him all the love and trust and affection he’s been denied by his foolish, formal family.

And one day, they meet in the middle. It’s the midst of the Hanami, the cherry blossom festival- and they’ll laugh at that, later, the timing- and he sneaks away in the early afternoon to see her because he’ll have no time that night

There are pink petals all around them, fluttering into her hair and his hair and landing so softly on their shoulders. The sunlight filters softly through the tree branches and bathes them both with soft, warm light.

He apologizes, because it’s a standing tradition now, their two walks. Once at sunrise, once at night. He looks so sad, so apologetic, so genuinely distressed, that she has to wonder. When did this become real? When did tolerating his presence become a need for it? When did taking a walk change from an unfortunate necessity to the most important part of every day? And she looks at him, her eyes soft and wide, petals in her hair, and it hits her that there’s no going back from this.

This isn’t something she can give up.

And he watches something shift in her face, curiosity to horror to relief to a strange, surprised joy-

And then he kisses her, because he’s wanted to for days, for months, for years. Because she looked so beautiful, and so happy, and want became need. His hand cups her face, fingers tangling into her hair, and she reaches up to grasp his shoulder, her other arm going around his waist, and there’s so much warmth in his chest, so much unbearable love inside of him that he can’t breathe. His hands go to her shoulders, so thin and so cold under her uniform, but his hands are warm, and so gentle.

She feels the same thing he did, her heart rising up in her throat like a promise, a fear, a hope. The kiss is long, and almost chaste, their mouths opening just enough to breathe, to chase each other, to whisper across each other. When finally, they pull apart, his eyes are closed, and she fears he regrets it.

“My lord?” She asks, and her voice is choked with feeling. He shakes his head and kneels in front of her, his hands sliding down her shoulders until they’re grasping hers.

“I will break my promise, my engagement, the law, if you say yes,” he tells her, resting his forehead on her hands. “I will do anything, whatever I must, to make you my wife, if you will only say yes.”

“You shouldn’t kneel before me,” she says, because she’s Hisana.

“Is that a yes?” he asks, and there’s laughter and tears in his voice. She falls to her knees, too, and pulls one hand away to lift his chin.

“Yes,” she says pointedly, and he kisses her again.

Of course, it’s all easier said than done.

One does not simply break a marriage contract in the Kuchiki family.

His grandfather fucking loses it. There’s a good amount of raised voices- not yelling, because that would undignified and plebian- but Ginrei Kuchiki makes it plain what he thinks of Byakuya trying to break a sealed contract for some girl. 

It does not make things any better that said girl is a peasant from the edge of nowhere, from Inuzuri, whose virtue and dowry are nonexistent. When Ginrei so much as insinuates that Hisana is some kind of prostitute, Byakuya comes dangerously close to threatening him.

When Ginrei not only outright accuses her of whoring herself out, returning to Inuzuri to do the same, and of trying to net Byakuya for his money, his grandson goes ramrod straight and deathly still. He insists, through gritted teeth, that she has nothing to gain from such a difficult situation but him. “Why put herself in such a position?” He spits. “Why throw herself before your sword if not for the faint hope of love?”

Ginrei cedes this point, but then reminds Byakuya that the dishonor of breaking such a marriage contract could leave him with nothing.

“All you would have, boy, is that girl and your sword. You’d have nothing.”

“On the contrary,” he says, voice deadly soft. “I would have everything in the world I desire.”

Hisana, sitting in the other room with the Kuchiki ladies and their ladies maids, has a sheepish look on her face and does a lot of wincing at the yelling. It’s when the room goes quiet that she begins to worry.

But this is the Kuchiki family, and displays of dignity and decorum are the only way to prove one’s seriousness. Ginrei agrees to attempt to break the marriage contract- provided Hisana passes a number of tests and can attain character references.

Hisana, who at this point is just glad that nobody’s died because of her, agrees immediately.

I’m not saying they do an old-fashioned virginity check, but I am saying Ginrei’s a twit with a stick the size of Ryujin Jakka up his ass, so he has someone do an old-fashioned virginity check.

Hisana is willing, but deeply unamused.

They then also interview all the maids, who gleefully assert that the only man who’s had any chance with Hisana is his lordship himself, that she’s a model employee, and that she’s a sweet, even-tempered girl.

Ginrei, if he must have a peasant for a granddaughter-in-law, would like her to be a defenseless peasant. When one of the maids suggests that Hisana has a sword she keeps hiding, he’s promptly suspicious.

He has the family guards search her things, and luckily she tossed it into a well the night before, so he doesn’t find it.

That night, however, the blade comes back. She screams at it, pleads with it, begs it to leave. If it keeps coming back, if it returns, she knows she’ll lose any chance of being with Byakuya. So she asks it, one final time, to disappear, to sever itself from her soul and never return.

It listens.

Ginrei is forced to be satisfied, and the contract is broken.

All in all, it takes them a year to actually get to the wedding.

It is not well-attended, but it’s a lovely ceremony. Byakuya almost sheds a tear to see Hisana’s name on the family register. He sniffs and clears his throat to banish the urge, and she kisses the backs of his hands and smiles.

The majority of the nobles turn on Byakuya, and most of them violently hate Hisana, but she expected that and he hardly seems bothered, so they don’t mind any of it. The staff are overjoyed, and Byakuya is almost deliriously happy. 

Their walks continue during their engagement and their marriage, and everyone on staff thinks it’s adorable. It took them a while to realize the whole thing was genuine, but they’re all fiercely dedicated Kuchiki retainers, and Hisana was once one of their own, so once it all comes through they’re almost possessive of the couple. They’re proud of them.

“One of us, eh?” they say. “Like a fairy tale.” The maids in particular are glad that their new mistress will be their new mistress. “She was always so modest,” they agree. “So refined. Should have known she was born for something like this.”

Maids of visiting nobles are less forgiving. “She used to be one of us,” they sneer. “Fucking the great Lord himself doesn’t make her any better.”

Hisana snorts into her tea when one of her maids tells her this.

She finds it hilarious. Byakuya finds it… less so.

“What am I supposed to call you?” She asks one day, frowning. “I’m still technically a commoner, so I can’t simply call you by your name, but I’m also to be your wife, so I can’t simply call you ‘my lord.’” She sighs, and he shakes his head.

“If I had things my way,” he tells her slyly, “You’d only ever call me husband, and nothing else.”

“Yes, Byakuya-sama,” she jokes, and it sticks because it’s half-love and half-teasing, and there is nothing more fitting than that between them.

Byakuya was in the Thirteenth for a time before he transferred to the Sixth, and Ukitake is notoriously supportive of his subordinates. So Ukitake and Kyouraku both attend the reception, and give the couple lovely gifts. They are, in fact, some of the only people to do so.

Their honeymoon is short, but sweet. They spend the Hanami at an orchard, walking and speaking quietly, enjoying the freedom and each other’s company.

They spend a lot of time in bed.

(The maids are betting on a kid by autumn.)

And for a time, she’s happy. She’s never been happier. Even the knowledge that Rukia is out there, somewhere, isn’t enough to dampen her joy. She knows, in her heart, that being a Kuchiki would also give her a better chance at finding her sister again.

And so she looks, using her newfound status to take her farther, let her search longer. 

The first two and a half years are good. Wonderful. There are no children, but this is a problem for later, so they don’t worry. They have all the time in the world.

And then she falls sick.

It’s like a piece of her has broken off, been swept away. Like she’s lacking a piece of her soul.

And she is.

You can’t just give up your zanpakuto. It doesn’t work that way. You can break that bond, true, you can snap off that piece of yourself, but in doing so Hisana weakened herself. Made herself vulnerable.

And still she searches, feeling the clock ticking down, feeling time come up behind her like a thief, taking all the joy and hope she once had.

She does her best not to worry Byakuya at first. She turns her coughs to the clearing of her throat, turns her wheezes to sighs, the weakness in her legs to a mere desire to read.

But she cannot hide it forever, and one day they walk together, passing through the trees under which they shared their first kiss, and she collapses.

He’s frantic, desperate. Afraid.

He carries her to the main house, calls the family doctors.

They can find no clear cause for her ailment, beyond a general weakness of her soul. They advise her to rest, and him to make sure she does, and take their leave.

He tries to make her stay in bed, honestly, he does. But once he falls asleep she goes out to look for Rukia again. She can feel herself hollowing out, being carved apart by this sickness in her soul. She needs to find her sister. She needs to see Byakuya. She needs both the people she loves most before she can go.

He follows her out, begs her on his knees to return. To rest, to please, please let herself get better. And she just smiles, takes his hands in hers, and tells him she doesn’t think she’ll ever get better.

He takes her back in silence, and once she’s closed the doors to their room, he breaks. They’ve been married for only three years, and already he’s losing her. She strides across the room, for a moment so determined and sharp it’s as if she’s not sick at all, and she throws herself into his arms. The force of it throws them both onto the bed, entwined and shattered, and so, so in love with each other that it aches.

He weeps into her hair, and she cries into his chest, and they lie there for the rest of the night. He holds her, his arms so tight around her she swears he’ll never let her go, and her hands fisted into his back like she can’t hold him closely enough.

The two years after that are heartrending. She fades, slow and quiet and dimming a little with every day. He cannot always be with her, and it breaks him a little more each time he comes home to find her pale and cold, breath rattling like death in her lungs.

Still, she searches whenever she can. He begs her to rest. Not to stop, for he has no right and no desire to ask her to be any less herself, but to at least rest more in between.

She smiles and shakes her head, and tells him that she stole this life. She cannot, will not rest, until it is returned.

His heart cracks each time she says it, each time she tells him she doesn’t deserve the joy they held between them.

Still, she searches, until her legs give out beneath her, and she cannot search any more.

This is how he knows the end has come.

So when she falls, and does not rise again, he leaves all responsibilities, all other things in his life, because he knows he will never forgive himself if he doesn’t.

Day after day, he lies beside her, cradling her to his body because she’s so cold, and so fragile, her bones standing out with such clarity it pains him, and she clings to him like he’s the only light in the world.

And then it becomes too painful for her to even be touched, so he is forced to sit beside her as she shivers, and coughs, and breathes so slowly he must listen fearfully for the next breath.

She reaches for him, her voice so thin he strains to hear it, and he takes her hand in his for what he fears, what he knows, is the last time.

“Please,” she begs, and there are tears in her eyes. “Please find my sister.”

That is not the difficult thing she asks of him. The difficult thing is when she begs him not to speak of her to her sister, to never let her know who she had missed knowing. He swears, his grasp on her so tight it must hurt, but she does not flinch, only smiles, so sad and so full of love for him he feels he has failed.

She does not love herself at all, even now, and it burns him.

She fades at last, the first plum blossom fluttering to the ground as his heart plummets, shatters, is crushed under the weight of her hand in his, lifted only by his own power because she’s gone.

His name is the last thing to cross her lips, and he kisses it away from them one final time.

He mourns

The grieving period for a noblewoman is 

His family insists that Hisana is no noblewoman.

Her wake is attended sparsely- the servants, who were so proud, several cousins who became fond of her, his grandfather, who had come to grudgingly respect her and the fierceness she brought out in her husband, Ukitake, Kyouraku, who knew her only by proxy, but who felt his grief all the same. 

He feels alone, even so.

He sits vigil for her, and the stars mock him with memories of those first few walks. The moonlight falls on him alone, her face cold, and still, and turned to the north where the moonlight cannot reach her. He allows himself to weep for her that night, and that night alone.

His heart will not take any more.

The next day he must commit to a burial.

His relatives, now that she’s gone, feel free enough to spout their ill opinions of her. She’s been dead less than a week, and already they spite her.

Several even go so far as to suggest he should commit her to sutebaka, to leave her in a river or a shallow grave in the wilderness, as befits a common whore like her. 

Several titter and offer up their own ideas- that he ought to remarry, that he’ll take a suitable bride this time, that all memory of the peasant who once shared his bed would be swept away with her death. Bile rises in his throat, and he bites down on his fury. Senbonzakura whispers to him with a thousand voices of the sunlight in the cherry orchard, the petals in her hair, the softness of her smile, and he calms. 

But those who spoke so cruelly of his wife never walk into his home again.

She’s burned with dignity, and her ashes given into his care. His grandfather is kind to him in this one thing, and allows her to be placed into the family grave.

Ginrei also attempts to have him reconfigure the kenseikan into the style of a widower, to show that he is mourning, but available, but Byakuya refuses.

His wife may be dead, but she is still his wife, and he will take no other.

Of that, he is certain and clear.

Ginrei takes the measure of him with his eyes, remembering that argument they had when he was to break the contract. The stillness of him, the quiet, measured way he speaks, the coldness of his voice. He nods, and says no more.

Loyalty in love, even loyalty to a common girl with no worth and no honor, is something he can admire in Byakuya.

He searches for Rukia.

He thinks of her often, of the girl his wife left and regretted so bitterly it burned her away, and he must crush the bitterness, the resentment, because it wasn’t her fault. Hisana had such a capacity for devotion, for deep, unflinching love. She could not be blamed for who his wife was, or for the mistakes she freely admitted she had made.

In time, he came to anticipate her. To almost want to meet her.

He snaps pieces of himself back into place, in that year between. Draws together masks and walls he never had need of before, because the world is too cold without her there, too unfocused and unkind without her fond, teasing words, at once gentle and sharp.

He hopes Rukia looks something like Hisana. He thinks perhaps that will make it easier to bring her into his home, if she does. 

He comes to regret that.

He hoped she might look like his wife. He did not expect her to be so much like Hisana, but she is. She’s small, and sharp-voiced, though she dims it with deference, and she has the same eyes, the same ink-dark hair. His heart throbs in his chest, because for half a moment he believed it was his wife, returned to him.

He welcomes her to the family, and her small, tentative smile smashes what little of his heart he had rebuilt since Hisana’s death. It’s at once too warm, too close to familiar, and too sharply, coldly unfamiliar.

He cannot look at her, after that.

He cannot bear to even try.

He knows she feels unwelcome in the following days, but he can’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes. He eats separately, spends most of his time away from her.

He makes a vow to his parents, that never again will he break their laws as he has twice now- for love, he tells them, the words coming easily now that he’s alone, for love and for hope, and for myself, because never have I wanted anything more.

He swears never again, and feels an echo of Hisana’s hand in his.

He finds Rukia one day in the space he has come to think of as Hisana’s, standing alone in the orchard where so much that has been important in his life occurred. She wears her academy uniform, the red a color he rarely saw on her sister, and that difference is enough to make the knot in his chest loosen.

“Oh,” she says, and there’s fear in her voice. “I’m so sorry, my lord.” And it causes a pang in his heart, because this isn’t how anything should have gone. She should not be alone here, without the sister she will never know, afraid of him and so alone.

“Please,” he asks, still avoiding her eyes. “You are my sister now.”

“But-” She hesitates, and that is enough to make him shake his head. He can’t open his mouth, for fear that the whole story will come pouring out.

“Nii-sama, then?” she asks, and he nods, heart thick in his throat.

He watches from a distance, does his best to keep her from becoming a seated officer because not again, he will not lose another girl with violet eyes, testifies that her devotion to Lieutenant Shiba was such that she would never kill him of her own volition, keeps her safe, keeps her away from danger-

And then he’s being sent to arrest her, and he cannot so much as breathe.

His vows. Too many vows.

And Renji, who he knew was devoted to her, who he knew would lay down his own beating heart for her in a moment- it is Renji who must pull her back because Byakuya has not the strength for it

And then that damnable boy appears, all Shiba features and sharp tongue, and there’s an echo of himself in that boy, of all the laws he has broken and the love that brought him there, and he sees red he’s so angry

He leaves him bleeding and wishes it were him on the ground instead

It’s easier, to be the defeated one. Simpler to lie there and lick your wounds and rise again than live with the blood on your hands.

This, he knows.

It’s when the whole thing falls through, when the kenseikan lies shattered on Sokyoku Hill and Rukia is freed of her sentence, and Ichimaru’s poison is coursing through his blood, that he can finally tell Rukia the truth

There’s a lightening in his chest that he cannot explain, like a weight has been pulled free of the tangle of emotions in his chest.

Renji hears the story, maybe. He thinks perhaps that was what he was going to say, before Kurosaki came wailing through the window looking for Rukia. He doesn’t ask. Renji is his Lieutenant, after all. They’ll be seeing each other an awful lot in the future. There will be time.

Rukia comes in to visit him one day, a plate and tray stretched between her trembling hands. His heart pulls, to see it, because even now he cannot say if it is nervousness or anxiety, the cold or fear that makes her shake.

“Nii-sama,” she finally says, her voice quiet, hushed and hesitant, and he says nothing because to say anything would discourage her. She has been discouraged enough on his account already. “Nii-sama,” she repeats, her fingers twisting in her lap. “What- what was she like?”

His whole chest hurts, and there’s a strange muscle spasm in his hand that he has to clench it to get rid of. He is silent for a moment more before he can say anything.

“She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever had the fortune to know,” he says, finally, voice solemn and quiet and so full of yearning Rukia wonders if she’s imagining it. “She was quiet, and kind, and clever. And so, unfailingly loyal.” He looks up at her, really looks, for the third time in his life, and now she sees the pain in his eyes. “She loved you more than anything.”

“No,” Rukia says, with a strange half-smile. “She loved us.”

And Byakuya laughs for the first time in fifty years. It’s a hoarse, broken sound, half-despair and half-joy, and he nods. 

“Yes.” He smiles, thin and sad and so bright it makes Rukia wonder what he was like before. “She loved us.”


End file.
